Category: The Future

A Story from The Future by C.A. Schaefer: “To Whom Will You Seem Beautiful”

I am eighteen when I decide. I stand by the bed of the creek, watching the light on the surface of the water, when a man steps down beside me. He takes my face in his hands and turns it, side to side, as I might inspect a puppy or an antique, and then says,…
“The Butchers”: A Fiction Excerpt from The Future by Alana I. Capria

On Sundays, we butchered. It made us so happy, S— and me. We did not mind the blood or sound. We butchered what crouched and quivered, what was soft against a knife. S— and I butchered until our hands were wet. We prepared the butchering for a meal, for stews, steaks, and roasts. I carried…
“Onyx Egg”: Poetry from The Future by Caleb Nelson

someday things will be the worst they’ve ever beennothing will be all right essentially everything will suckthe most it’s ever sucked I’ve been trying to preparefor this impending suckage by holding one blue onyxegg in my hands while I sleep under the lumberingthunder of another winter’s calibrated dream call it whatever you want it’s okay…
“all gorgeous objects found in the terror of your past”: A Poem from The Future by Jeff Pearson

1. Ongoing whispers in your head. 2. Your howls.3. All memorials for something.4. You do not succeed in hefting up this bulk of matted fur.5. The building of something and the razing of another.6. Your taste of salt unsettled. 7. You pour out hieroglyphics of a hundred handprints, / the Fremont Indian Ruins of transpired…
Micah Zevin: Two Poems from The Future

Personification: Extinction Chronicles Can we make more happen than burning to the groundand tears? Become a disappearing collection in the noble library ofnoble thoughts and concepts shelved. Have you ever said you’ve run out of yourself? The ego is a regal thing but has no crown. I am in a rush not to slip into…
An Essay from the Future: “What the Birds See” by Janice Lee

—for and with AH Bird 1: How might we envision a future that is not ours, but could be?Bird 2: What you are asking about is the rejection of linear time, because linearity is for the colonizer, in which there is only one kind of progress.Bird 1: And what kinds of progress do we have?Bird…
“The Light to Our Worship”: A Poem from The Future by Armando Jaramillo Garcia

Vertical farming is coming The rain will grow your hair back Friends will be a dime-a-dozen Real ones will still be scarce Floods will balloon the bodies of thoughts Only science may prick to disastrous results And from that they’ll gather the seeds For their machines which will sting to touch Kites will bishop the…
Leland Cheuk: “My SMS,” short fiction from The Future

I sent one of my SMSs (Social Media Selves) to my friend’s reading way out in Longway Meadow. I didn’t want to go personally (too far, not in the mood), and I figured enough of my friend’s friends (or their SMSs) would be in attendance that I wouldn’t be missed. The holographic selves are very…
The Future: Two Poems by Chris Muravez

The Art of Dying We are all walking around,smelling like apocalypse—a fleshy earth musknot unlike summer squash.I’ve been accused of beinga nature poet, a religious poet,but I know nothing of naturenor religion. New York City is already underwater,the Brooklyn Bridge washed away.I’m not sad that I never got to visit.During the time of earth’s unmaskingtwo…